Excellent! - excellentdevelopment.com

How do the resources address the curriculum?

The story of Excellent Development's work is a holistic one and is suited to both human geography and physical geography. The film case studies can be used to support learning and pick out or draw together many elements from across the KS3 curriculum, and GCSE, AS & A-level syllabuses for all exam boards.

Key curriculum concepts addressed include water availability, food security, tackling climate change, appropriate technology, bottom-up aid, solutions for reversing land degradation, subsistence farming, semi-arid climates and environmental conservation.

Both case study films explore how and why people attempt to manage environments, and how human actions can cause sustainable change, in this case tackling the problems of soil erosion and water availability in semi-arid Kenya.

The case studies offer the opportunity to see how human and physical dimensions of the environment are interrelated by exploring the connection between sustainable human development and the environment. In this case students can see a positive outcome in the struggle between human development and environmental conservation where communities are able to reverse the effects of drought, population pressure and intensive cultivation and to transform their environment sustainably and improve water supplies, food production, health and incomes.

This look at the improvement of the micro-climate links to global climate change and to an aspect of interdependence between the pupil and the farmers in Kenya. Other such aspects are touched upon such as the issue of growing crops for export to European markets, and the role of charities and development agencies in LEDCs for whom they may have held sponsored events.

The sustainable development film gives the chance to see a definition of sustainable development take shape step by step. Students are encouraged to question, challenge and assess whether the development is indeed sustainable and worthwhile.

The sustainable farming case study explores other appropriate farming practices that are being used to improve agriculture in semi-arid Kenya.

Interviews with farmers and community group members allow students to hear first hand accounts of development in action and questions at the end of each section allow students to stop and think and discuss what they have seen.

The support resources provide a myriad of opportunities to use these detailed case studies or indeed to short films to develop knowledge further and employ a range of geographical skills.